After.

Just one or two days after I published my post on MH370, the government had announced the plane ended its journey in the middle of the Indian Ocean, nowhere near any islands or other even-smaller form of land mass.

I find it a bit premature for Malaysia to release a statement like this, given that absolutely no debris (related debris, at any rate) has been found so far and all analysis and the resulting conclusion are merely conjecture. I don't get why that statement projected an air of finality about it when absolutely nothing concrete was found yet.

With so many red herrings thrown up so far, understandably an announcement like this made the already-pissed Chinese even more pissed.

But what I don't get is all the conspiracy theory-ing: that Malaysia has somehow whisked these people away (for reasons unknown).

I get China's anger and frustration. What I can't understand even more is that people actually believe that we are capable of such a thing. And by "capable", I mean they're giving us way too much credit.

I even scoffed when I first heard that they were even looking into the Straits of Malacca. Like, hello, the plane was going to Beijing, it was heading away from the Straits...

But my heart sank when they announced that the plane turned west right before it was supposed to fly into Vietnam airspace.

Mind you, when news of the initial Straits search was announced, we all still thought the plane was somewhere en-route to Beijing. It was supposed to not be complicated.

The fact that many nationalities were on board that plane meant that our littlest-but-for-Singapore-and/or-Brunei country was thrust into the global spotlight. For those of us familiar with our state of affairs, I believe we got stage-fright and a case of the jitters at the time we're not supposed to. Our obviously-obvious lack of experience in this area led to missteps even when things were still relatively straightforward (bomoh aside).

But what everyone else seems to be forgetting is that we also have our own people on-board, and it was a plane bound from Malaysia, and it was our national carrier. We stand to lose a lot more than 'people', and at this point, I'm not sure it's an understatement when I say we have lost quite a bit...

Malaysia has said it would not give up until the plane is found. But we lack the technology to continue, and we are relying on the kindnesses of others, and they have no obligation to not call it a day after we do.

The last update we have on this is that China found a ping in the ocean, and I sincerely hope this ping doesn't go the way of all the debris we've found so far.

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